In a teleconference meeting of the House agriculture committee Tuesday night, MPs pressed for more help for the sector, saying the funding isn’t enough to sustain these producers and that the program relies heavily on farmers increasing their borrowing capacity. They also noted that nearly half of the aid is rehashing existing agriculture funding.

Bloc Québécois MP and committee vice-chair Yves Perron said the amount is “disappointing,” pointing to the U.S. where producers are being bailed out by the Trump administration with $17 billion in aid, while NDP MP Alistair MacGregor said the funding is less than 10 per cent of the $2.6 billion the Canadian Federation of Agriculture estimated would be needed.

Chris Forbes, the deputy minister for the federal agriculture ministry, said the government’s announcement of $250 million for the agricultural sector seeks to address urgent needs facing cattle and hog producers because of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as others in the industry.

“We are trying to respond to these pressing needs,” he said in French.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shuttered many processing facilities, leaving producers grappling with excess supply. While Cargill’s High River processing plant, one of Canada’s largest, re-opened on Monday, production levels have been slowed to just one shift a day, with many workers staying home.

In the funding announcement Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said $77.5 million, just less than one-third of the total funding, will be given to food processors for personal protective equipment for workers, upgrading facilities to better promote current public health recommendations or expanding processing capacities. Another $50 million will be used for a purchase program for surplus food.

The remaining $125 million, about half the total aid, will be added to the AgriRecovery program, which Trudeau stressed is to help Canadian beef and pork producers. AgriRecovery is a shared federal-provincial program designed to provide financial relief to agriculture businesses during emergencies. The federal government has committed to its funding portion even if the province won’t top up its 40 per cent, as is normally required under the program.

But Conservative MP Gerald Soroka said the AgriRecovery program has always been funded for $125 million, arguing the announcementcan’t be considered new money if its always been available.

Forbes acknowledged that the department has authority to spend $125 million each year but said the money wasn’t being spent.

“We’re announcing effectively that we’ll make all of that available if needed, starting with the beef and pork ranchers and farmers, and then if needed in other areas,” he said.

Soroka said the program is helping farmers with the cost of feed production, but not with falling prices. He also took aim at the “borrowing capacity” in the program, which sees farmers defer payments or borrow more money through Farm Credit Canada, noting that producers don’t want to incur more debt.

“How can we develop a program instead of just getting [producers] to borrow more money through Farm Credit?” he asked.

Forbes said the $50 million surplus food program partly addresses that idea, returning a value to a producer where a product might otherwise have no value. He said farmers should look to programs like AgriStability to help with revenue issues.

In his remarks, Conservative MP Richard Lehoux said the funding announcement doesn’t address the costs for producers forced to depopulate livestock that can’t be processed.

Forbes, though, said the funding announcement addresses additional expenses incurred by keeping cattle longer on the farm as they are unable to be processed, though he did not specifically address questions about federal aid for farmers forced to depopulate.

“This was something that was requested by the stakeholders in terms of the types of programs we should come up with,” Forbes responded in French, referring to the AgriRecovery program.

The AgriRecovery program will work like a set-aside program, which has long been requested by the cattle industry, to help cover the cost of feeding livestock while the wait to be processed.

On Monday night, just hours before the funding announcement, Bob Lowe, president of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, said there’s a backlog of 100,000 cattle waiting to be processed. In his request to committee members to implement a set-aside program, Lowe said these cattle have dropped in value from to $166 million from $250 million, while costing about $4,000 per day to care for.

In an interview with iPolitics Wednesday, John Barlow, the Tory’s agriculture critic and committee vice-chair, said though effective for the cattle sector, the program does nothing to help hog producers.

Barlow said the program has worked in the past by giving cattle producers $2 a day per cattle, which are put on a “maintenance diet” to keep them alive and from gaining weight while they wait to be processed. He said producers don’t want animals to gain weight, because processing plants don’t want animals that are too large.

But, Barlow said, hog producers are running on a much different timeline. He said cattle ranchers might raise around a few hundred heads from the time of a calf to when the animal goes to a feedlot, but that even small hog producers have 1,600 hog heads per month. At a House industry committee meeting last week, Barlow said a hog producer in his riding with 1,600 hogs spends around $300,000 on feed a month.

Because of the volume of livestock, Barlow said said hog farmers need to make room for new piglets in their barns. As well, he said pigs continue to gain weight no matter what diet they’re on, and processing facilities don’t want large pigs.

“To have no details on how this is going to address the pork producers. . .they can’t hang onto the animal for an extended period of time, more than a few weeks,” he said.

Agriculture and Agri-food Minister Marie Claude Bibeau did not respond to request for comment in time for publication.

A source in the minister’s office with knowledge on the AgriRecovery Program said it is a significant measure because the federal government doesn’t have to wait for the province to pledge its 40 per cent to go ahead with the funding, accelerating the process. As well, they said producers can claim up to 90 per cent of eligible expenses under the program, though they couldn’t clarify whether that would include the cost of culling livestock at this time.

Barlow said the federal government hasn’t committed to covering the cost of farmers forced to cull their livestock. He also said he doesn’t expect many provinces will top up AgriRecovery with another 40 per cent, although he noted provinces like B.C. and Ontario, have offered additional support to the sector through their respective provincial programs.